Can dietary supplements of digestive enzymes be taken long-term

In fact, there is no general "can" or "can't" for this question. The core depends on your purpose of supplementation, your own physical foundation, and whether the dosage is correct. Blindly following the trend of long-term supplementation is risky, but long-term supplementation according to the doctor's advice may not cause problems if the symptoms are correct.

Two years ago, I met a girl who was born with insufficient secretion of lactase. She suffered from bloating and diarrhea whenever she touched something containing lactose. In the past five years, she would take a lactase capsule with every meal before drinking milk or eating cheese. Her liver, kidney and pancreatic function indicators during annual physical examinations were all normal. Her attending doctor also said that the dosage of her supplement was very small, and lactase is a component secreted by the body itself, and the unused part will be naturally metabolized after eating. In this case, long-term consumption is completely fine.

But I have also heard many negative examples from colleagues in the Department of Gastroenterology. There are many young men who have good digestive functions. However, they are afraid that they will not be able to digest after eating hot pot and barbecue or overeating, so they habitually take two pills of complex digestive enzymes. After eating for more than half a year, they occasionally forget Even if I eat light home-cooked food, my stomach feels bloated and indigestible. When I checked, I found that my digestive enzyme secretion function has deteriorated. To put it bluntly, my stomach is "lazy" - I have to let external enzymes do the work for me every day. After a long time, I will naturally stop doing it.

The current attitude of the academic community towards long-term supplementation of digestive enzymes for healthy people is actually not completely unified. Some studies believe that low-dose supplementation will not affect the secretory function of the body. There are also clinical data showing that high-dose supplementation of complex enzymes for more than 3 months will indeed reduce the secretion activity of pancreatic enzymes. In the absence of a conclusion, the safest thing is definitely not to eat indiscriminately.

In fact, digestive enzymes are like temporary helpers you hire for your stomach. If your own digestive function is defective and you can't do the work, it is completely reasonable to hire someone for help in the long term; but if you are physically strong, but you are too lazy to hire someone to do the work for you every day, your muscles will definitely degenerate over time. This principle is simple.

If you really have a problem with indigestion, first find out whether it is enzyme deficiency, bacterial flora disorder, or other problems. Don’t just blindly buy those Internet celebrity complex digestive enzymes and eat them. If the doctor judges that you really need long-term supplementation, just take the dosage prescribed by the doctor. Don’t increase the dosage randomly. There will basically be no major problems.